Martin Gardner, whose career as a scientific journalist
spans nearly five decades now, has of late become a favorite source of
entertainment for skeptics the world over.The learned octogenarian apparently gets great satisfaction out of
drawing attention to other peoples’ folly, using his sardonic wit as arrows of
incredulity that are relentlessly and mercilessly shot toward his intended
target, usually with deadly accuracy.Sometimes, however, Gardner’s journalistic skills and keen sense of humor
are directed toward prejudicial ends, his aim not so sure, and the tips of his
arrows not so sharp.

All
but one of the chapters in Did Adam and Eve Have Navels? (DA&EHN?),
Gardner's fifth anthology of what he considers “far-out cases of
pseudoscience” (p. 1), are reprints of recent articles from his column “Notes of
a Fringe Watcher,” a regular feature of Skeptical Inquirer.This bimonthly magazine serves as the
official mouthpiece for the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims
of the Paranormal (CSICOP), the self-anointed rectory for the preservation of
right thinking, co-founded by Gardner, philosopher Paul Kurtz, magician James
Randi, psychologist Ray Hyman, and sociologist Marcello Truzzi back in
1976.

Granted, CSICOP does a bang-up job whenever they cast
their gimlet eyes upon the harbingers of all variety of skewed notions
pertaining to quackery and pseudoscience.Gardner particularly likes to focus on those phenomena that have a
particularly cultic or occultic flavor (including, as he sees it, that specific
branch of theism known as “young earth creationism”).[1]His Fads and Fallacies in the Name of
Science, written over 40 years ago, served to expose movements such as Flat
Earthers, Dianetics, and Reichian orgone energy.And to their credit, CSICOP has been
known to expose several hoaxes perpetuated within the field of medicine and
other disciplines where it matters, their efforts having managed to prevent
needless suffering or perhaps even death through informed decisions.Thus Gardner hides behind this “noble
cause,” investing his talent to said efforts even when the stakes are not so
high, no doubt feeling it his duty to debunk the fanatics of the world and
accepting this responsibility without apologies to whosever's toes he may step on
in the process.

But
there is one particular field of knowledge in which Gardner, because of the
resoluteness by which he clings to his naturalistic world view, never fails to
insert foot in mouth whenever he attempts to broach the subject.Gardner is a fideist, a particular kind
of deist who believes that God, though he exists, is unknowable and has not
bothered to make himself known to mankind through any means of divine
intervention or revelation.The
topic for which Gardner exposes his amateurish grasp is biblical exegesis, for
which his sophomoric approach should be an embarrassment to a man of his
tenure.The title alone of the book
under discussion lets us know that Gardner cannot help but take a few cheap
shots at that lunatic fringe sect known as “fundamentalist”
Christianity.

Case
in point: Martin Gardner wrote the introduction to Steve Allen’s Steven Allen
on the Bible, Religion, and Morality, a rather weak diatribe that pokes
unwarranted fun at those Bible-thumping “fundamentalist wackos.”Apparently, then, Gardner seeks
fraternity with an author whose posthumous prowess in matters exegetic is
questionable at best, laughable at worst (see Jeffrey Stueber’s review of
Allen’s book at http://www.tektonics.org/JS_SA.html).In the late Steve Allen’s book, and as
reaffirmed in Gardner’s introduction, no distinction is made between a
“fundamentalist” and your average practicing Christian.The distinction is purposely blurred in
Allen’s and Gardner’s view by propping up the more controversial personages
within Christendom as target practice.This tact is taken in order to more readily dismiss the Bible as mythical
mumbo jumbo or whatever derogatory description fits the
mood.

“I’m
not sure why I became interested in debunking bad science.It may have been my disenchantment with
the views of George McCready Price.Price was an uneducated Seventh-Day Adventist whose many books defending
a six-day creation and the flood theory of fossils I took seriously for a very
brief period in my boyhood.It was
not until I attended classes in biology and geology at the University of Chicago
that I finally understood where Price went wrong and what an amusing dunce he
was.” (p. 3)

Much more about Gardner’s loss
of faith after walking the hallowed halls of liberal academia can be gleaned
from his two “confessionals,” The Flight of Peter Fromm and The Whys
of a Philosophical Scrivener, but perhaps another time.Suffice it to say that Gardner’s is a
familiar story that was elucidated by the Master some two thousand years ago, in
that some seeds fall on stony places and immediately sprout forth because they
have no depth of soil, but when the sun comes they wither away (cf. Matt.
13:5-6).

Among the more notable exposés of societal ignominy,
Gardner cites such commonly held beliefs as the existence of angels and that
evolution is an unverified theory as evidence that the general public is
woefully ignorant of the “facts.”Gardner finds that the evidence for organic evolution is as overwhelming
as the “theory” that the earth goes around the sun, and in fact declares that
the “theory” of evolution should be elevated to the rarified air of “fact” that
it so richly deserves (see p. 3).Even before pulling out of the chute, Gardner here is already exposing
either his woeful ignorance of, or his abject refusal to acknowledge, the
hundreds of scientists who beg to differ.

Are You an Inie, or an
Outie?

With
this biographical sketch in mind, let us peruse Gardner’s latest diatribe.Chapter one begs the question of the
book’s title, offered as a Bible-thumper-stumper that is guaranteed to confound
all your fundamentalist friends.The “conundrum” goes like this: if Adam and Evedid not
have navels, then they were not perfect human beings, according to Gardner.If, on the other hand, they did
sport belly buttons, then the navels would imply a natural birth that they never
experienced, having been special creations by God according to Holy Writ.The chapter waxes historic on how
Christianity has “struggled” with the issue since Michelangelo painted the
Sistine Chapel showing Adam with a navel.

But
this rather trivial issue becomes a “conundrum” only if one allows it to become
one.Gardner provides no
elaboration whatsoever on his statement that Adam and Eve would have been
“imperfect” human beings had they been created without navels.Perhaps he is thinking that Christians
are required to believe that Adam and Eve were created as physically perfect
specimens of humanity.But such is
not a litmus test for orthodoxy, since nowhere in Scripture does it say that
they were born with (what we could call) "perfect" bodies.They may or may not have sported belly buttons for all we know.My guess is that they probably did not,
since they would have had not gone through the process of being conceived and
nurtured in the womb.On the other
hand, they might have had belly buttons without having necessarily gone through
the gestation process.Perhaps God,
having created the prototypes Adam and Eve to serve as the templates for all
future generations, incorporated the navel in His design (though we can then hear critics crying about how this might be taken as deceptive!).To be sure, Adam and Eve were created
sinless, but having “perfect” bodies (whatever that implies) is not a requisite
for sinlessness.Gardner’s biblical
“conundrum,” the very basis of which belies the theme of his book, is therefore
moot and baseless.

Counter-Intelligence

With
the title of the second chapter (“Phillip Johnson on Intelligent Design”), one
would expect that Gardner has provided a stimulating challenge to one of the
more prominent proponents of the Intelligent Design movement (IDM).Not so.Instead, the chapter is a classic
example of how one goes about rigging the jury by declaring an adversary’s
position to be in error, then calling upon a parade of henchmen to gather the
“facts” to this end.Gardner
correctly characterizes the IDM as asserting that the extremely fine-tuned
complexities of both the cosmos and of organic life on earth imply a
transcendent Designer of enormous (perhaps infinite) intelligence.But instead of providing any salient
rebuttal to these testable claims, Gardner borrows from his cronies to poke fun
at Phillip Johnson, focusing most of the attention on Johnson's book Darwin on Trial.

In
keeping with his belief system, the most obvious “duh” factor in
Gardner's book is to be found in the following statement, in
which he postures himself with evolution and declares its tenets to be gospel:
“. . . [T]oday’s evolutionists all agree on the fact of evolution . . . .” (p.
17).Of course, this statement no
more makes evolution a fact than the statement that “today’s creationists all
agree on the fact of creation” makes creation a fact.But there we have it, folks; the deck
has been stacked, and we can bet Johnson is likely to be dealt a losing
hand.

Gardner begins by chastising Johnson for his
“mistreatment” of the ongoing debate among naturalists as they attempt to
explain the reason for missing evolutionary gaps. Gradualists such as Richard Dawkins
contend that evidence abounds for these transitionary gaps and continue to be
discovered.The problem with such
“evidence,” however, is that it merely points to subtle transitions within a
species (microevolution), which creationists have no problem accepting as
evidence of genetic variation within a species.On the other hand, “jump” theorists such
as Stephen Jay Gould explain away the missing gaps by evoking the punctuated
equilibrium hypothesis.This
popular loophole proposes that it is when species’ populations reach their
lowest levels in the most isolated habitats that natural mutations work most
efficiently to enable new species to emerge.Thus, new species appeared through brief
episodes of relatively rapid mutations that occurred between long periods of
stasis (hence, the lack of evidence for transitional species).The problem with this hypothesis is that
it has no evidentiary basis.Contrary to the hypothesis, empirical evidence indicates that the odds of
more advanced species appearing decreases in direct proportion to the
number of mutations and the window of time allowed for mutations to occur.Recent research confirms that the
smaller the population and habitat, the greater the likelihood of extinction.[2]Other field studies have provided the
first direct evidence that inbreeding brought about by habitat and population
reduction is, quite literally, a dead end.[3]

As
do all creationists, Johnson contends that special acts of creation can better
explain the diversity of nature, rather than natural processes.Gardner tries to poke fun at one of
Johnson’s more salient features of ID--that complicated structures such as eyes
and wings have no survival value unless they appear suddenly and fully
formed.Says Gardner: “Intermediate
stages, [Johnson] falsely insists, are not in the fossil record and simply did
not exist” (p. 18).In a footnote
to this sentence, Gardner fills the reader in on Johnson's “folly”:

“There are thousands of ‘missing link’ fossils, and
every year more are found.Examples
are the stages between reptiles and mammals, between reptiles and birds, between
land mammals and whales, between horses and their progenitors, and between
humans and their extinct apelike ancestors.The so-called fossil ‘gaps’ are partly
due to the rarity of conditions for fossilization and to the relatively rapid
series of mutations emphasized by Gould and his associates.” (fn, p.
18)

Well, for one thing, we can see that Gardner suffers
from Gould fever, for he recites the all-too familiar mantra that the reason no
transition fossils can be found is that they are so far and few between!Abracadabra, the no-god-of-the-gaps has
waved its magic wand!How deeply
satisfying this circular doctrine must be to naturalists the world over (never
mind the huge blind leap of faith required to get there).But more importantly, Gardner asserts
that “thousands” of “missing links” exist, yet provides no specific examples
thereof.It may be because contrary
or inconclusive evidence inevitably appears which inhibits the scientific
community at large from drawing the conclusion that any bonafide transitional
species has ever been discovered.Reptiles and mammals?Mammals co-existed with reptiles as early as the Triassic, under the usual classification scheme.Reptiles and birds?Archaeopteryx, once hailed as the
quintessential transition between dinosaurs and birds, was eventually classified
as a bird upon further study (without the same degree of avid celebration
enjoyed by the original discovery, I might add).[4]The more recently sensationalized
“dino-bird” discoveries (Caudipteryx and Protoarchaeopteryx) have
been subsequentially determined to be hybrid fossils.A specimen of Archaeoraptor,
hailed by National Geographic in November 1999 as the definitive missing
dino-bird link, was later exposed as a clever forgery consisting of a dinosaur
tail glued to the body of a primitive bird.[5]Land mammals and whales?According to what we all have been
taught since grade school, certain large land-dwelling mammals (the
mesonychids) evolved into the ancient freshwater-drinking whales, which
evolved into ancient saltwater-drinking whales, which evolved into intermediate
whales, which evolved into modern whales.Evolutionists present this “progression” as their strongest evidence for
“transitional forms” and the viability of natural selection and mutations as the
driving forces behind evolution.Yet a potent challenge to this conclusion has come from recent speciation
models based on the established rapidity in which changes in whales took
place.[6]These speciation models set the
parameters within which natural selection and mutations can work to advance a
given species.[7]According to the established criteria,
the whale has virtually no chance of advancing by natural evolutionary
mechanisms.

Regarding our ancestry with extinct apelike creatures,
Gardner needs to broaden his reading horizons a bit.Even under their own paradigm, evolutionists have all but conceded that
Neanderthal, the closest “link” to the so-called homonids, is not genetically
linked to modern man.[8]Naturalists are now sounding the
retreat, propping homo erectus up as our direct link to the homonids at
some as-yet unspecified time period.And it is no wonder that no specified timing is given for the divergence
of modern man from homo erectus, since it is widely believed that the
latter went extinct long before the former appeared!But even morphological (fossil) evidence
strongly suggests that homo erectus and homo sapiens are two
distinct, independent species.

Gardner does at least acknowledge many of the tenets of
ID without argument, such as how big bang cosmology points to a transcendent
Creator and how the strong anthropic principle is gaining renewed strength
through modern scientific discovery.Michael Behe’s Darwin’s Black Box is given honorable mention as
one example of the many “impressive” books on ID, but its influence is casually
dismissed based solely on the premise that evolution is fact.Gardner even acknowledges the existence
of old-earth creationists apart from their young-earth counterparts, if ever so
briefly (p. 16).However, his
apparent intent in doing so is not to debate old-earthers, but to further
demonize the creationist movement at large by pointing out the ongoing feud
between the two factions.On the
other hand, one of Gardner’s objections to Phillip Johnson’s strategy is how
Johnson points to the ongoing feud between gradualists and punctuated
equilibrists.To this end, Gardner
can’t have his cake and eat it too; he cannot dismiss the creationist movement
just because there are rival factions within, while at the same time
invalidating those critics of naturalism who turn their attention to the
mutually exclusive ideas among evolutionists.

Another strategy of Gardner’s is to render Johnson’s
arguments impotent by way of association.Gardner brings up the fact that Johnson’s Darwin on Trial fails to
mention one of Darwin’s earlier foes, the British biologist St. George
Mivart.One of the first theistic
evolutionists, Mivart spent his life trying to persuade the Catholic church that
its opposition to evolution was as futile as its earlier opposition to Galileo’s
promotion of the Copernican heliocentric model of the solar system.(Of course, the driving mechanisms
behind the Copernican revolution are much different than those of the evolution
“revolution,” and a comparison of the two is not valid; but that’s a different
story altogether.)Because similar
arguments offered by Johnson can be found in Mivart’s On the Genesis of
Species (1871), Gardner infers that Johnson’s arguments are “moth-eaten
objections” (p. 19) and are therefore rendered invalid.Mivart was the first to argue that eyes
and wings are too complex to have evolved through gradual stages, and that such
structures must appear suddenly because earlier primitive stages would have no
survival value.Gardner rightly
affirms that creationists have argued this point since Mivart’s day (much to the
consternation of evolutionists, I might add).In Gardner’s words, “creationists of all
stripes have monotonously asked, ‘What use is half a wing?’”To which one of Gardner’s able
assistants responds:

“In
his popular book The Blind Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins answered as
follows:

‘There are animals alive today that beautifully
illustrate every stage in the continuum.There are frogs that glide with big webs between their toes, tree-snakes
with flattened bodies that catch the air, lizards with flaps along their bodies;
and several different kinds of mammals that glide with membranes stretched
between their limbs, showing us the kind of way bats must have got their
start.Contrary to the creationist
literature, not only are animals with “half a wing” common, so are animals with
a quarter of a wing, three quarters of a wing, and so on.The idea of a flying continuum becomes
even more persuasive when we remember that very small animals tend to float
gently in air, whatever their shape.The reason this is persuasive is that there is an infinitesimally graded
continuum from small to large.’” (p. 19)

Excuse me a minute, while I try to compose myself.Apparently, Dawkins is unaware of the
old adage that the sum of the parts does not necessarily equal the whole.So far as my amateur mind can recall,
there are no known incidents in the record of nature, past or present, of frogs
with fully-developed wings between their toes, winged snakes fluttering about
the trees, stealthy lizards who take flight (with the exception, perhaps, of
Puff the magic dragon), or flying squirrels (gliding squirrels, perhaps, but
none that can take off from the ground--not even Rocky can do that!).In other words, none of the examples
that Dawkins cites are transitions to fully-functional wings.That bats must have gotten their start
via the squirrel method must have been amusing to watch over the ages.Think of all those poor rats who, for
some reason unbeknownst to them, struggled to stretch their one-eighth wings and
catch the cold, damp, and still air of the caves in which they sought
refuge!At the same time, they
would have had to willingly sacrifice perfectly good vision for blindness and
worked up the aptitude for sonar.But who knows: perhaps by the time I am 80 years of age, my flabby
armpits will permit me to take to the sky, and my waning eyesight will grant me
x-ray vision, just like Superman!

Gardner thinks he’s got Johnson on the ropes by this
time, chiding him for categorizing Dawkin’s belief in the gradual development of
eyes and wings as mere fables.As
Johnson imputes that no empirical confirmation can be made that eyes and wings
evolved gradually, Gardner slams his trump card down in strong disagreement,
citing an entire chapter from Dawkins’ A River Out of Eden (1995) that
provides what he deems an “eloquent chapter on the multiple evolutions of the
eye” (p. 19).Let’s get an eyeful
of Dawkin's eloquent chapter right now, shall
we?

The
chapter to which Gardner so gleefully refers is called “Do Good by Stealth”
which, among other things, provides an “answer” to creationists’ “hopeless
defiance” toward the evolutionary hypothesis.On page 76, Dawkins props up a false
analogy, citing how a human eye, through the process of natural aging, is still
capable of providing useful functions even at ever-increasing levels of
deficiency (what Dawkins refers to as the continuum of age).Now, is it just me, or does the
degeneration of an organ speak absolutely nothing of how a particular species
adjusts to its changing environment through genetic mutation?The range with which a particular
species’ eye can perform is not an argument for the presumed range of eye
evolution among different species.Dawkins cites his own ophthalmological demise as an example of how,
without the aid of prescription glasses, his deteriorating vision does not
permit him to see the computer screen before him, but a person of his condition
can still play tennis with a sufficient degree of visual acumen.(Reverse logic ad adsurdum.)But what do prescription eyeglasses and
tennis courts have to do with survivability when, say, a member of the human
species is placed in the unenviable position of finding his way home after a
long chase through the jungle on the hunt?The analogy Dawkins attempts to draw is that dragonflies’ eyes are poor
by human standards, but useful nonetheless.However, this fact has didly squat to do
with eye evolution, since the same argument could be used for intelligent
design: all creatures endowed with some form of vision have just the type of eye
they need, nothing more, nothing less.Dragonflies are not quite as concerned with the location and direction of
a charging bear as a human might be!

The
next “argument” Dawkins attempts to use is that of the “sheer magnitude of time”
(p. 78).Surely any creationist
would quake in his or her boots upon realizing that all the time in the world
was available for the eye to evolve into the several models that we see
today.But I must caution the good
doctor that availability does not equal inevitability.We would respectfully ask him to kindly
provide us with some empirical evidence that shows evolutionary processes are
precisely how these changes took place.What sort of evidence does Dawkins rely on?Because neither field nor lab evidence
are available, he opts for a computer model!But as anybody familiar with computer
modeling knows, the outcome of a model is only as good as the assumptions that
are put into it.Models are
notorious for providing a desired outcome, and are not necessarily the
"objective stewards" that their proponents claim them to be.What sorts of assumptions were put into
this computer model?Why, the very
same untenable assumptions that we are always hearing about: that the natural
selection of random mutations is how it all happened, of course!Shazam!

Such
is the extent of Dawkin’s “masterful” defense of the evolution of eyes.Having perused A River Out of
Eden, it appears to be nothing more than the speculative ruminations of a
dyed-in-the-wool naturalist.Dawkin’s book regurgitates the arguments that have been offered since
Darwin’s day, thus keeping the discussion on a superficial level, rather than
delving into the complexities of the molecular machinery that modern science has
discovered.(For a technical
description of the biochemical complexities of the human eye, see Michael Behe’s
Darwin’s Black Box, pp. 18-22.)

But
enough about professor Dawkins; we are here to pay homage to Mr. Gardner.In a profound irony, Gardner also chides
Johnson for his failure to make mention of the Dutch botanist Hugo de Vries
(1848-1935), the person who coined the term mutation in the
first place near the turn of the twentieth century.De Vries had argued that all new species
appeared “suddenly” as a result of a single mutation in one generation, with no
apparent transitions.Gardner here
is implying that Johnson should have given De Vries due consideration if he were
worthy of his academic credentials.However, Gardner himself is to be chided for not mentioning why De Vries
is often dismissed in contemporary discussions of evolution in an age of modern
scientific enlightenment, as he has done in at least one previous book of
his.In his Urantia: The Great
Cult Mystery, in which he is critiquing The Urantia Book’s shameless
dependence on De Vries’ theory without proper merit, Gardner introduces the
Dutch botanist as the “now forgotten Hugo De Vries” (p. 297), referring to De
Vries’ evidence for his sudden mutation theory as “shaky” and “short-lived” (p.
298), and stating that De Vries’ theory is “now totally discarded” (p.
299).So why does Gardner bring up
De Vries in the first place?I
suspect it is for two reasons.First, Gardner wants to establish to his readers that his is the superior
voice on the topics he wishes to discuss, having the ability to drop more names
than his targeted adversary.Second, it is yet another dull arrow flung at Johnson in an attempt to
assassinate his character, as though it is Johnson who could learn a lesson in
consistency.

Finally, Gardner enlists the two harshest criticisms of
Johnson’s Darwin on Trial he can find for the general amusement of his
fellow skeptics: Stephen Jay Gould’s review in the July 1992 issue of
Scientific American and one offered by anthropologist Eugenie C. Scott
that appeared in a 1993 issue of Creation/Evolution (Vol. 13, No. 2, pp.
36-47).Gould’s review is presented
from a predictable standpoint: “Science can work only with naturalistic
explanations; it can neither affirm nor deny other types of actors (like God) in
other spheres (the moral realm, for example).”[9]Thus, like all good naturalists worth
their weight in salt, Gould cordons off the realm of science from the Creator,
as though His “influence” has no bearing on the record of nature
whatsoever!Once again, for all you
evolutionists out there who think Gould=s point is indefatigable: Proving the existence of God
is one thing, which scientific inquiry alone admittedly cannot provide.But to hide behind the rubric that the
noble knights of science are under obligation to keep God in a box labeled “for
moral considerations only” is a bit like having an election with only one
candidate to choose from!

Space does not allow the comprehensive critique that
Eugenie Scott’s review deserves.Suffice it to say that her main gripe against Johnson (which she repeats
ad nauseam) is that Johnson “confuses the necessary methodological
materialism/naturalism of science with philosophical materialism/naturalism”
(pp. 41, 43).In other words,
Johnson does not know the difference between the cold, hard, factual basis upon
which the scientific method is founded and the subjectivity of a philosophical
premise.But the fact remains that,
in the case of organic evolution, the intended objectivity of the scientific
method has indeed been overshadowed by a philosophical assumption, that of
naturalism.This coloring of the
scientific enterprise is precisely what Johnson has spent his literary career
shouting about!Methodological
materialism has been tainted by philosophical naturalism.He obviously has not confused the two,
but instead has shown the degree of their entanglement.Johnson wants to see a return to the
scientific method in the area of natural history, free of the naturalistic
fetters that currently bind it.It’s too bad that neither Dr. Gould nor Dr. Scott get this poignant
message.

The Cutting
Edge?

In
an addendum to the chapter on Phillip Johnson and ID, Gardner mentions a
“thoroughgoing attack on intelligent design” in Robert T. Pennock’s Tower of
Babel: The Evidence Against the New Creationism (1999).Pennock voices the disbelief typical of
evolutionists that any true scientist can actually hold creationist views.He asserts (as Gardner echoes) that
among biologists “there is no controversy about whether or not evolutionary
theory is true” (p. 38).Such
statements, however, do not take into account numerous creationists who are
practicing biologists.While the
stated purpose of Tower of Babel is to attack old-earth creationists, it
attempts to altogether discredit the creationist movement by pitting
young-earther against old-earther and presenting the movement as a befuddled mob
engaged in a sordid power struggle (hence, the book’s title). [Ed. note: See a review of Pennock's book here.)
In the end, however, books such as
Tower of Babel written by naturalists can do little more than reaffirm
the naturalistic philosophy, and they tend to do so without any truly scientific
grounds to go on.Such treatises
will typically point an accusatory finger at creationists for leaning on their
God of the gaps to explain the inexplicable, while all the time it is the
naturalists who rely on a stacked deck that decries naturalism must explain
everything.When naturalistic
explanations are unable to provide answers to observed phenomena or discoveries,
the god of naturalism is evoked as that which will inevitably prevail, given
enough time.The problem with this
presumption is that time has allowed for the discovery of increasing complexity
in the working of the natural world, such that known natural mechanisms do not
provide satisfying answers as to the complexities of
nature.

The Chinese
Connection?

Also
in the addendum to Gardner’s chapter on Johnson is his reference to a column in
the 16 August 1999 edition of the Wall Street Journal, in which Johnson
referred to a “Chinese paleontologist” who “lectures around the world saying
that recent fossil finds in his country are inconsistent with the Darwinian
theory of evolution.”David E.
Thomas, a physicist and contributing editor of Skeptical Inquirer, wrote
Johnson and requested that he reveal the name and credentials of this mysterious
Chinese scientist.Gardner reports
that Johnson refused to name the person, but had indicated that he had not as
yet published anything in English.Gardner reports Thomas’s astonished reply:

What
Gardner does not report is that Johnson had told Thomas that “he’s not releasing
the scientist’s name in case someone wants to make trouble.”[11]In his book Icons of Evolution,
Jonathan Wells reports siting the same “non-existent” Chinese scientist on
American soil, and provides a few details as to the person’s
credentials:

“In
1999, a Chinese paleontologist who is an acknowledged expert on Cambrian fossils
visited the Unites States to lecture on several university campuses.I attended one lecture in which he
pointed out that the ‘top-down’ pattern of the Cambrian explosion contradicts
Darwin’s theory of evolution.Afterwards, scientists in the audience asked him many questions about
specific fossils, but they completely avoided the topic of Darwinian
evolution.When our Chinese visitor
later asked me why, I told him that perhaps they were just being polite to their
visitor, because criticizing Darwinism is unpopular with American
scientists.At that he laughed, and
said: ‘In China we can criticize Darwin, but not the government; in America, you
can criticize the government, but not Darwin.’”[12]

In the “Research Notes” portion
of his Icons of Evolution, Wells explains that it was he who first told
the story about the mystery scientist, and why he has kept his identity a big
secret:

“The
Chinese paleontologist story has been making the rounds since I first told it to
some colleagues in 1999.Sadly, the
principal reaction from dogmatic American Darwinists has been to demand his
name.I refuse to give it to them,
knowing what their colleagues have been doing to critics since at least 1981,
when British paleontologist Colin Patterson, in a famous lecture at the American
Museum of Natural History in New York, openly questioned whether there is any
evidence for evolution.Afterwards,
dogmatic Darwinists hounded him relentlessly, and Patterson never again voiced
his skepticism in public.I fear
they would do the same to the Chinese paleontologist in my story, an excellent
scientist who deserves to be protected from heresy-hunters.”[13]

In
retrospect, one of Gardner’s talking heads resorts to the time-honored practice
of outright denial, who in turn is suspected to be in league with verbal
thugs.Wonderful credentials these
colleagues of Gardner’s have.

Stars in Their
Eyes

Other chapters in Gardner’s book provide snippets of
Bible-bashing here and there.After
a belaboring historical overview of how several “liberal” religionists have
attempted in vain to explain the miraculous by natural means, Chapter four,
entitled “The Star of Bethlehem,” informs us that the account in Matthew chapter
two was “made up” to fulfill a prophecy found in Numbers 24:17—“‘I shall see him
[God], but not now.I shall behold
him, but not nigh: there shall come a star out of Jacob, and a Sceptre shall
rise out of Israel.’” (as cited in Gardner, p. 45).But while some biblical scholars might
contend that the Star of Bethlehem was indeed a fulfillment of this prophecy,
others would say that the prophecy was fulfilled by king David.The remainder of the prophetic verse
lends support to the latter interpretation: “A Sceptor shall rise out of Israel,
and batter the brow of Moab, and destroy all the sons of tumult.”Second Samuel chapter 2 and First
Chronicles chapter 18 record how King David had defeated the Philistines and the
Syrians (the “sons of tumult”), and had subdued the
Moabites.

There are also those scholars who, although not
necessarily of the liberal ilk, do not consider the star of Bethlehem account in
Matthew to be the depiction of a supernatural fulfillment of prophecy event at
all.Two such scholars are
mentioned in Gardner’s addendum to this chapter: Mark Kidger of Princeton and
Michael Molnar of Rutgers, both of whom authored a book by the same title in
1999 (The Star of Bethlehem).Both authors theorize that the “star” was a natural astronomical event
that the “wise men” (most probably Persian astrologers) took to be a sign that a
king had been born.For Kidger, the
event was a nova that Chinese astronomers had recorded in 5 B.C. and that had
followed a series of conjunctions.Molnar asserts that Jupiter had been occulted by the moon in the
constellation of Aires on 17 April, 6 B.C., the supposed date of Jesus’
birth.Both of these theories
inject fresh insight into the issue, bringing into the discussion cultural
influences that help explain the mysterious aspects of the account.But Gardner, having made up his mind
that the star of Bethlehem never took place, will not stand for it.He disparages Molnar’s book by stating
that it claims “Matthew incorrectly described this astrological event as a star
that moved through the sky” (p. 46).But this is not what Molnar is saying at all.Instead, Molnar is inferring that past
interpretations of the account in Matthew have the star moving through the sky,
while it does not necessarily need to be interpreted as such.Gardner uses this misrepresentation of
Molnar’s position to cast further doubt on the veracity of
Scripture:

“If
Matthew was so wrong about a star, how can we be sure he was right about a
journey of wise men from the east?Molnar’s conjecture strikes me as just as irrelevant as the other guesses
about an event in the sky that could be taken as a star.Surely the simplest explanation of
Matthew’s account is that both the Star and the Magi belong among the many
gospel legends that have no factual basis.” (p. 46)

Nice
try, Mr. Gardner, but no gold star for you.Since Molnar is not claiming Matthew’s
account of the star’s movement to be incorrect, there is no need to conjecture
upon other errors therein.And
despite Gardner’s attempt at appealing to Ockham’s Razor, the simplest
explanation is not necessarily that the event never took place.Granted, it may very well be the laziest
explanation.However, because both
miraculous and natural phenomena can also be offered as simple solutions, a more
rigorous examination is therefore called for, which Gardner is apparently
unwilling to undertake.

Oh, the
Inhumanity!

Nestled within the chapter on the star of Bethlehem, as
Gardner rebukes those who do not take the Bible for what it is (“a grab bag of
religious fantasies”), are recollections of two particular stories he finds
rather “morally disgusting”:

“I
think of the tragic legend about the rash vow of Jephtha that prompted him to
sacrifice his daughter.(Why does
Saint Paul speak of Jephtha as a man of great faith?)Or the account of how an angry Jehovah
slew Moses’ two nephews with lightning bolts merely because they failed to mix
the incense properly for a sacrifice.God didn’t like the way the smoke smelled!The Old Testament’s God is as skillful
as Zeus at using lightning as a weapon of punishment.” (p.
45)

The
account of Jephthah’s vow is found in Judges chapter 11, beginning with verse
29, where Jephthah offers up whatever comes out of the door of his house to meet
him after returning from battle as an offering to God if He were to show favor
toward him during his engagement with the Ammonites.As is typical of many skeptics, Gardner
is attempting to imply that the Bible and God condone human sacrifices.But there is good reason to believe that
a literal blood sacrifice was out of the question, because human sacrifice was
strictly and repeatedly forbidden by God, as reflected in the Mosaic Law (Lev.
18:21; 20:2).It would have
therefore been unthinkable for Jephthah or any other Israelite to believe that
he could please God by committing such an abominable act in His honor.Rather, the manner in which the
narrative proceeds points to Jephthah’s daughter being handed over to the
service of the Lord as a living sacrifice, a virgin attendant in tabernacle
worship for the remainder of her days.The agony behind the rash decision was that Jephthah’s daughter was his
only child (v. 34), and therefore his lineage would not continue (which was
considered a tragedy in those days).Again, the simplest explanation is not necessarily that which is hastily
deduced.(For further consideration
on this issue, see J. P. Holding’s “Jephthah and Daughter: Bad News for the
Firstborn?” at
http://www.tektonics.org/tekton_03_02_04.html.)

Gardner’s point regarding Paul’s consideration of
Jephthah as a man of great faith would be well taken, except that nowhere in
Paul’s epistles is Jephthah specifically mentioned.Although Jephthah is given honorable
mention in Hebrews 11:32, scholars have all but eliminated the apostle Paul as a
candidate author of Hebrews.Of
course, authorship is a moot point since Gardner here is merely attempting to
apply guilt by association.But
this observation does provide further insight regarding Gardner’s lack of
biblical finesse.

Be
that as it may, we still need to tackle the issue of Jehovah’s Zeus-like
demeanor toward Moses’ nephews.The
account Gardner is referring to is in the first verses of Leviticus chapter
10:

“Then Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, each took his
censer and put fire in it, put incense on it, and offered profane fire before
the Lord, which He had not commanded them.So fire went out from the Lord and devoured them, and they died before
the Lord.” (Lev. 10:1-2)

According to Gardner, God was displeased because he
didn’t consider the smoke’s aroma appealing.But said account does not indicate God’s
demeanor regarding the smoke one way or another.The second error in Gardner’s fuzzy
recollection is his implication that God used lightning bolts to smite the
two.The account clearly indicates
that they were devoured by fire, not lightning (perhaps by the very fire that
the two had started in the first place).But these peripheral misstatements aside, the “burning” issue here (sorry
about that!) is whether or not this incident should be judged as “morally
disgusting.”Bible students will
recall that these two sons of Aaron had been anointed as priests, and therefore
were responsible for properly approaching God at the altar on behalf of all the
Israelites.Their death was tragic
and may at first seem harsh, but keep in mind that a new era, that of the
priesthood, was being inaugurated.The community had to be made aware that compromising priestly obedience
was not an option.

Outsmarting the
Master

Chapter 26, entitled “The Wandering Jew,” is Gardner’s
only essay included in the book that is not a Skeptical Inquirer
original.It instead first appeared
in Free Inquiry way back in the summer of 1995.Knowing the relative age of the article,
I find it curious that nobody has called to Gardner’s attention the enormous
errors of presumption upon which the article is based prior to it being
reprinted.The article begins by
quoting from Matthew 16:27-28, which is repeated
below:

“‘For the son of man shall come in the glory of his
Father, with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his
works.Verily I say unto you, there
be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of
man coming in his kingdom.’”

Gardner declares this to be one of the most troublesome
of all New Testament passages for Bible fundamentalists, by virtue of Jesus’
Second Advent having not occurred before all those disciples still living at the
time of his death had passed away.Matthew 24:34 (“This generation shall not pass until all these things be
fulfilled”) is also mentioned as troubling prose.Gardner then pokes fun at all the
Christian sects and individuals throughout church history (most notably, those
wacky Protestant Fundies) who “find it unthinkable that the Lord could have
blundered about the time of his Second Coming” (p. 276).

Gardner’s favorite example thereto is the legend that
arose during the Middle Ages of the “Wandering Jew.”As the story goes, some person of early
first-century Jewish descent (perhaps the apostle John or another disciple of
Jesus) had been cursed with immortality to wander the earth until Jesus finally
decided to return, thus fulfilling the prophecy.The legend eventually found its way into
several modern poems, novels, plays, and even a movie or two, all depicting a
hapless wandering Jew whose unenviable fate was necessary so that the words of
Jesus could be exonerated.

Is
the legend of the Wandering Jew yet another face-saving tactic that all of
Christendom must resort to in order to defend the faith?Not hardly.To Gardner, such fabrications are
inevitable because there is simply no other way out of this pickle.Indeed, Gardner calls the legend a “sad
attempt of Christians to avoid admitting that the Galilean carpenter turned
preacher did indeed believe he would soon return to earth in glory, but was
mistaken” (p. 281).Superfluous
legends notwithstanding, many Christian scholars have pointed out that Jesus was
referring to the Transfiguration in Matthew 16:28 and its parallel passages (cf.
Mark 9:1; Luke 9:27).In all three
Gospel accounts, Jesus’ declaration is immediately followed by the
Transfiguration (Matt. 17:1-13; Mark 9:1-13; Luke 9:27-36).Other scholars point out that another
possible fulfillment of Jesus’ words is that Jesus was referring to the day of
Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit descended on a crowd of converts (Acts
2:1-4).

Gardner, anticipating these arguments, offers us this
pretzel logic:

“The
difficulty in interpreting Jesus’ statement about some of his listeners not
tasting of death until he returned is that he described the event in exactly the
same phrases he used in Matthew 24.He clearly was not there referring to his transfiguration, or perhaps (as
another ‘out’ has it) to the fact that his kingdom would soon be established by
the formation of the early church.Assuming that Jesus meant exactly what he said, and that he was not
mistaken, how can this promise be unambiguously justified?” (p.
276)

It
is from this self-serving cue that Gardner launches into his explanation about
the Wandering Jew.But Matthew
24:34, however much Gardner wants to make it so, is likely not referring to the
Second Advent, but to the destruction of the Jerusalem temple in 70 A.D.Note carefully in Matthew 24:3 that the
disciples had posed two questions to Jesus just after He had prophesied the
destruction of the temple and appurtenant events: “When will these things be?”
and “What will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?”After much elaboration about the latter
(vv. 4-31), Jesus answers the question to the former’s timing in verse 34.He then answers the timing of the latter
(the Second Advent) in verse 36: “But of that day and hour no one knows . . .
.”As disappointing as this may
sound, Gardner has resorted to nothing more than the trusty switch-and-bait
routine.The paragraph cited above
can therefore be viewed as Gardner’s glossed-over approach to two completely
different issues, no doubt offered as fodder for the skeptical masses.(See also “On the [Soon?] Return of
Jesus” by Dee Dee Warren at
http//www.tektonics.org/soon.html.)

Another way of viewing this non-issue is from an
alternative interpretive theory.Gardner’s chapter on the Wandering Jew pokes fun at just one of the two
major schools of eschatology, the futurists.Futurists believe that some or all of
the events described in the Olivet Discourse (Matt. 24) and all those in the
Book of Revelation refer to events as yet to be fulfilled.Futurists therefore maintain that the
description provided in the passages discussed (Matt. 16:28; 24:34) of the
coming of the Son of Man is yet to be fulfilled; hence, the potential conundrum
when Jesus states that “some will not taste of death before these things are
fulfilled.”The above paragraphs
adequately debunk Gardner’s contention from a futurist perspective.The other interpretive position, known
as preterism, asserts that most (if not all) of the passages pertaining to the
coming of the Son of Man and appurtenant apocryphal descriptions (including
those found in Revelation) were fulfilled during the times surrounding the
destruction of the temple in A.D. 70.Gardner=s “pickle” therefore holds no sway for preterists, as
“this generation” indeed did not pass until all things were indeed
fulfilled.Both futurist and
preterist positions are considered to be within the pale of Christian orthodoxy,
and neither position (save perhaps those that hold to peculiar variants thereof)
is the least bit disturbed by Gardner’s red herring.

Parting
Shots

Martin Gardner, who apparently admires the misconceived
posturings of his fellow outspoken anti-supernaturalists, does not see why
creationists and their archaic dogma have to get in the way of interpreting the
record of nature from a naturalistic perspective.Such preconceptions, when so deeply
ingrained into a luminary’s conscience, cannot help but ooze out onto literary
projects intended to expose the silly ruminations of the lunatic fringe, but
that in the mean time go out of their way to falsely impugn a time-honored
faith.If for no other intrinsic
value, Gardner=s DA&EHN? serves up yet another heaping helping of
warmed over giggles and guffaws for his not-so-gentle readers, offered from one
whose skeptical leanings prevent him from having developed any degree of finesse
when it comes to biblical exegesis.

It
is Gardner's fedeistic opinion, based upon “an emotional leap of
faith” (p. 21), that the laws of nature (including the “fact” of organic
evolution by way of natural selection) were set up by an indifferent creator and
upholder of the universe who sees no need for “tweaking” his creation once its
unfolding gets underway.The Divine
Clockwinder has wound the clock of the universe and has left it on the celestial
bedside ever since, having drifted off into slumber.For us to try to understand his god is
to Gardner like a cat trying to grasp calculus.Gardner goes on to describe his god as
“an unconscious watchmaker” (p. 22).But before he slips the surly bonds of flesh and blood, perhaps Gardner
should begin to contemplate whether or not he can determine if his god is merely
unconscious, or wholly dead.

ENDNOTES

[1].Without debating the merits or shortcomings of the various positions
within the camps that call themselves “creationists,” it is this author’s intent
to expose Mr. Gardner’s ignorance of the testable and widely accepted evidence
for intelligent design primarily from an “old-earth creationist”
perspective.No criticisms of other
creationist views, including that of “young-earth creationism,” are implied or
intended.For a concise
introductory presentation of the merits and shortcomings among the predominant
views put forth by biblical creationists, this author recommends the book
entitled The Genesis Debate: Three Views on the Days of Creation (David
G. Hagopian, editor; Crux Press, 2000).